Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Samantha Wills and ended up having an inspiring chat about her scars, my spirituality and the tumultuousness that can often accompany an entrepreneurial success story.
SAMANTHA WILLS
Samantha’s recent collaboration with Optus has given her a platform to share her story, which includes the ups and many downs of her groundbreaking journey, that I thought was not only inspiring, but also very valuable to hear about.
She is the face of the latest installment of Optus’ Small and Medium Business (SMB) campaign that launched this month. The Believe Big campaign encourages Australian SMB’s to follow their dreams and ‘believe big’ as Wills once did who is known for quoting:
“No one starts a business hoping to be small,”
But you know what? I kinda did. Not in a ‘I-hope-I-stay-small-forever’ sort of way, but more because I wanted to do what I loved for a living and had no idea where that journey would lead to, in fact, I still don’t
Samantha Wills has never shared any of this publicly before. Her personal account of her journey was not only refreshingly honest and raw, and despite being impeccably groomed when you meet her, there’s an unpretentious person with a big heart that wants to genuinely connect.
SCARS
I don’t know about you, but I can sometimes grow tired of hearing about well-known public figures talking about their trials and tribulations over and over again.
I think there’s a fine line between sharing your story in order to inspire hope and ignite the spark of a possible change for someone, versus a carefully curated version of ‘I-used-to-be-fat/depressed/in-debt/-but-since-discovering-yoga/pilates/nutrition/this-program-I’m now-happy/successful/rich/healthy’
Many of us have scars that have either physically healed, or can no longer be seen so unless we share our story in relevant contexts, our students or clients won’t necessarily know what we’ve been through.
This is the case for many that have suffered either a miscarriage, a relationship breakdown, an adrenal burnout, abuse or any invisible illness.
I was with my friend Andrea who also has her own jewelry business, and she joked that unlike Samantha, she’s not at the stage in her own business where she can get others to create her design pieces.
Samantha laughed and showed us her hands which still bore the scars from her many late nights of working furiously to finish the many orders that she’d naively thought would not take so long to finish at the time.
SPIRITUALITY
I love that she owns the story that got her to where she is right now. I think that our life is a spiritual experience, and to be able to talk about your own connection to what drives you spiritually is a great gift.
In my own journey, I’ve learned that owning my story through appropriate contexts is something that keeps unfolding, and I always share it with the intention that it will help others to find their own healing path by turning my own ruins into a path of wisdom.
As someone that tries to live a life that is as minimalistic as possible, I try to stay as unattached to little trinkets as much as I possibly can.
Samantha Wills’ jewelry comes in wooden boxes, and as I’ve been gifted many of her pieces by my siblings over the years, I’ve amassed a number of them in different sizes that I can’t bare to throw away.
I took great delight in telling Samantha that initially I used them as magic reiki boxes, and then started using them as mini altars each time I’d start a new 40-day kundalini yoga meditation.
These days, I’ve graduated to using them as anchor points or portals for each one of my clients that joins me on an 8 week Soul Alignment journey as a way of helping them stay aligned to their healing over our 8 week spiritual voyage.
Til next time, sending you lots of winter-y love,
Patty xx
P.S. I have 2 spaces left for a 1:1 balance this week and now have spaces in the next round of the personalised Soul Alignment program.